Antony Eastmond writes with authority and clarity on a topic that is complex and frequently minimized: the issue of Byzantine identity in the aftermath of 1204 and the loss of Constantinople to the armies of the Fourth Crusade. After 1204, Byzantium was fragmented into three competing centers and three competing dynasties: the empire of Thessaloniki, ruled by the Doukai; the empire of Nicaea, ruled by the Vatatzes; and the empire of Trebizond, ruled by the Grand Komnenoi. As Eastmond points out, scholars have turned primarily to the Empire of Nicaea for continuity and “the image of Byzantine identity” (3). By focusing on the empire of Trebizond and the imperial identity created by Manuel I Grand Komnenos, Eastmond redefines what “the very idea of Byzantium” meant in the thirteenth century (5).

The eponymous capital of the empire of Trebizond, now the Turkish city of Trabzon on the Black Sea Coast, was established by Alexios I Grand Komnenos in 1204, and it preserved its autonomy until 1461. The city of Trebizond during the rule of Manuel I Grand Komnenos (1238–63), grandson of Alexios I, provides Eastmond with a worthy object of intensive study. He examines the ways in which the city functioned as a mirror for Manuel, reflecting his rule, his empire, and his case for legitimate rulership to the competing Byzantine empires, and, in a broader context, to neighboring emirates and kingdoms. Eastmond stresses the importance of the relative wealth of material remains of thirteenth-century Trebizond: the cathedral of the Panagia Chrysokephalos and the churches of St. Eugenios and Hagia Sophia. Focusing on the best preserved, the church of Hagia Sophia, and also considering fragmentary remains of the great palace, numismatic evidence, and imperial commissions, Eastmond teases out the imperial messages conveyed by the use of spolia, specific choices in architecture and monumental decoration, and the way objects functioned within imperial ceremonial. He demonstrates how the emperors of Trabzon saw and portrayed themselves as Byzantine emperors, and how the city was constructed to present a version of the capital in exile.

This book, as the preceding indicates, is dense and layered but will amply reward the careful reader. The complexity of the subject is eased by abundant illustrations—102 black and white figures and 21 color plates. The choice to use endnotes provides the usual—and, for this reader, the only—frustration: the struggle to keep track of both the thought and the page while flipping back and forth. The bibliography is a model of its type, and the index is complete and well-ordered. The appendix, a list of rulers in the thirteenth century, drives home the complexity of the world in which the Grand Komnenoi operated. As Eastmond demonstrates, the emperors of Byzantium, the Latin emperors of Constantinople, and the rulers of Georgia, Seljuk Rum, Cilicia, Serbia, and Bulgaria were all considered members of the audience for the constructions, ceremonies, and commissions of the emperors of Trebizond.